Introduction to Plight of the Fortune Tellers: Why We Need to Manage Financial Risk Differently

Riccardo Rebonato
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Riccardo Rebonato: Royal Bank of Scotland, University of Oxford, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London

A chapter in Plight of the Fortune Tellers: Why We Need to Manage Financial Risk Differently, 2007 from Princeton University Press

Abstract: Today's top financial-risk professionals have come to rely on ever-more sophisticated mathematics in their attempts to come to grips with financial risk. But this excessive reliance on quantitative precision is misleading--and it puts us all at risk. This is the case that Riccardo Rebonato makes in Plight of the Fortune Tellers --and coming from someone who is both an experienced market professional and an academic, this heresy is worth listening to. Rebonato forcefully argues that we must restore genuine decision making to our financial planning, and he shows us how to do it using probability, experimental psychology, and decision theory. This is the only way to effectively manage financial risk in a manner congruent with how human beings actually react to chance. Rebonato challenges us to rethink the standard wisdom about probability in financial-risk management. Risk managers have become obsessed with measuring risk and believe that these quantitative results by themselves can guide sound financial choices--but they can't. In this book, Rebonato offers a radical yet surprisingly commonsense solution, one that seeks to remind us that managing risk comes down to real people making decisions under uncertainty. Plight of the Fortune Tellers is not only a book for the decision makers of Wall Street, it's a must-read for anyone concerned about how today's financial markets are run. The stakes have never been higher--can you risk it?

Keywords: financial risk management; decision making; financial planning; probablity; experimental psychology; decision theory; financial markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
ISBN: 9780691133614
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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